17th century England was particularly rich in good popular tunes, and these tunes were drawn from a much wider background than is conceivable today ; dance-tunes, folk-tunes, songs and melodies from serious works, all competed together and often swapped roles. Much from the previous century remained in the repertoire, while the change in style from renaissance to baroque inspired the development of new material. Curiously enough, the Puritans and England’s short lived republic under Oliver Cromwell (1649-1660) also stimulated popular music. It is sometimes wrongly assumed that the Puritans opposed and stifled all music-making; in fact, they only banned elaborate church music, and this meant that more energy was devoted to secular composition. England’s first commercial music publisher John Playford produced his English Dancing Master and several other music books during Cromwell’s rule with great success and no recriminations.

The popularity of a given melody can be partly gauged from its use in broadside ballads of the period. These poems, printed on a single sheet of paper (broadside or broadsheet) and sold in the street, were sung to familiar airs which were always named at the head of each sheet. Original sources of the tunes vary in sophistication from simple unaccompanied versions (as in the English Dancing Master) to elaborate settings by major composers of the day. The two extremes are contrasted in St. Paul’s Wharf. These sources, however, only represent a small fraction of the ways in which the tunes were played, since much depended on the essential art of extemporisation. Musicians knew the repertoire through and through, and would not have needed a written score to enjoy playing together.

London tunes

Each of these tunes is named after a well-known part of London. Hyde Park and Maiden Lane are extemporised by the bamd from the melodies in Playford’s English Dancing Master (1651 edition). The first version of St. Paul’s Wharf and Tower Hill are both keyboard settings by Giles Famaby (c. 1565-1640) in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Many different pieces of music have the title Gray’s Inn, usually because they featured in one of the masques performed there im the late 16th or early 17th centuries. This piece is by John Cocoper alias Giovanni Coperario (c. 1575-1626). He adopted the Italian version of his name after studying in Italy.

Country dance tiunes

Four very popular tunes, all to be found in a variety of sources, anid all except Newcastle specified in several broadside ballads. The settings here are developed by the players from the rmelodies in Playford’s English Dancing Master.

Ballad tunes mentioned by Shakespeare The plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries contain many allusions to ballad tunes of the day. The meaning of Callino casturame has been much discussed and is thought probably to be the English corruption of an Irish phrase starting with the word cailin (equals colleen or girl). In Henry V Pistol uises the phrase in reply to a French soldier whose words he has not understood. This version of the tune is based on Byrd’s setting in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. The valuations are extemporised. Marlowe’s poem Come live with mie and be my love is quoted by Shakespeare in The Merry Wive.s of Windsor. The tune can be found in William Corkine’s Second Book of Airs (1612). Light o’ love is referred to in both Two Gentlemen of Verona and Much ado about Nothing, amd the music exists in several lute and cittern books of the period. Jog on is a song in the Winter’sTale, sung by the balladeer Autolycus; the tune with the same title in Play ford’s English Dancing Master fits the words well.

Across the Channel

Several popular tunes in 1 7th century England were of continental origin, and likewise quite a few tunes became well known abroad. Chi pasta is a tune particularly associated with the cittern; the many English settings from around 1600 and after derive from a song Chi passa per questa strada by Filippo Azzaiuolo, originally published in 1557. La folia is based on one of several harmonic sequences or grounds which spread like wildfire through Europe from Italy in the first half of the 16th century. La folia was also known in England as Farinel’s ground because of the setting made in about 1 680 by Michael Farinelli. This version with its variations is found in Durfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy as the song All joy to great Caesar, with words fitting not only the theme but the variations too. The Branle or Brawl was a 16th century dance of French origin which spread to England. The best known version of Quatre Branles appears in Susato’s Danseryes (1551), though the tune was still current in the early 1 7th century. We sometimes forget that popular tunes had a far longer life then than they now do.

The top three ballad tunes

According to research done by Claude M. Simpson in his scholarly book the British Broadside Ballad and its Music, these are the tunes most often specified on ballad sheets before 1 700. All three are in a minor key (or more strictly, the Dorian mode) and derive from the Italian harmonic grounds mentioned above. Although Greensleeves is known today in one standardised version, many different accounts of the melody existed in the 1 7th century. This one was found in a Scottish music book dating from about 1 700. Fortune my foe achieved popularity as the tune associated with ballads reporting executions and survives in numerous instrumental settings. Here it is extemporised as a set of variations for the lute. Packington’s Pound is another tune whose title is obscure in meaning; it may refer to Queen Elizabeth’s favourite Sir John Packington, to his great uncle Sir Thomas Packington or even to a court musician who could have composed the piece, Thomas Paginton (d. 1586). First comes an anonymous setting of the theme from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and then an extemporised version by the whole band.

Across the border

This last section goes beyond the borders of England and the 1 7th century to explore the way a tune can change and develop over the years. It is surprising to discover that, despite their different national styles, several English and Scottish melodies have a common origin. The 1 7th century English tune The clean contrary way develops, with typical Scottish embellishments, into Gilderoy. Gilderoy in turn, with further embellishments and transposition into the major mode (a common procedure in the late 17th and early 18th centuries) becomes Gilliecrankie, played here in a fine setting for violin and continuo by William MacGibb on (1695-1756). Meanwhile in England The clean contrary way is seen to be related to several other traditional tunes, including The miller of the Dee. We hear this first in typical 18th century garb, set by Arne in the ballad opera Love in a Village (1765), and secondly as collected by Vaughan Williams from a folk singer in Sussex early this century. How strange that this last version, passed down aurally over many generations, bears a much closer resemblance than any of the printed tunes to The clean contrary way.